


The Long Way Round

by sixpences



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Ageing, Depression, Established Relationship, Grief, Homecoming, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Off-screen pet death, Post-Series, Trains, Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-10-31 09:39:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10896660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixpences/pseuds/sixpences
Summary: In the wake of tragedy and facing change to come, Yuuri and Victor make the ten thousand kilometre journey from Saint Petersburg home to Hasetsu the old fashioned way- on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Beijing.





	1. Saint Petersburg - Moscow

**Author's Note:**

> It's mentioned in the tags but I wanted to put it up front in the notes too: in this story Makkachin has recently passed away. I know pet death of any kind is a Big No for some people so just putting that out there first before you start reading.
> 
> Victor and Yuuri's travel itinerary has been put together based on information from [Seat61.com](http://www.seat61.com).

> _You do not have to be good._  
>  _You do not have to walk on your knees_  
>  _for a hundred miles through the desert repenting._  
>  _You only have to let the soft animal of your body_  
>  _love what it loves._
> 
> _Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine._  
>  _Meanwhile the world goes on._  
>  _Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain_  
>  _are moving across the landscapes,_  
>  _over the prairies and the deep trees,_  
>  _the mountains and the rivers._  
>  _Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,_  
>  _are heading home again._
> 
> \- Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese"

  


The thing that nobody really told you about becoming a professional athlete was just how much of your life you'd spend _waiting_ , hanging around in strange, liminal spaces that were neither one thing or another, from hotel elevators to the Olympic Village to the grey and empty places behind the scenes at arenas. Yuuri had spent what probably amounted to weeks in lifeless concrete corridors, in the unreal, nerve-scattering space between anticipation's end and the beginning of a performance, a cool and impersonal cocoon from which success or abject failure would emerge. He was as used to it as a person ever could be, at twenty-eight, with more than half of his life spent running from one competition to the next. But he'd never expected to feel the same half-there sensations in his own home.

He'd checked their suitcases, their rucksacks, and every room in the apartment twice. Everything they'd packed away to go into storage was still packed, everything they needed for the next few weeks was ready in their luggage, everything that was staying behind still lingered where they'd left it, leaving the vague impression of a place that somebody inhabited, but not anyone he knew particularly well.

In their bedroom the cloudy morning sunlight spilled in through the corner window, slanting across the bare mattress and gleaming off the glass of every one of the tiny lamps that hung over the bed. At night they seemed like a private starscape, an echo of the real night sky that was muffled by the sprawling light of the city. In the daytime they mostly made Yuuri think of what a pain in the ass they were to keep clean. But that was someone else's job, now, just like the whole place felt like somebody else's home.

They would be back soon enough. Business would bring them to Russia frequently enough that it made sense to keep the apartment, and they could lend it out to friends in the meantime too. But it would always be half of a place now. Somewhere to keep memories, not make them. And he wondered if it would always be Makkachin's apartment too, forever missing the sound of her claws on the floorboards, her soft bark, her steady, easy presence anchoring both of them. It had been empty before they even started to pack.

Yuuri heard the door open softly behind him and turned to see Victor's head appear around it. "Have we missed anything?" he asked, stepping into the room with the sunlight sliding over his face.

"No, I think we're ready to go."

"Good. The taxi should be here soon." Victor's hand brushed his elbow as he went over to stand in front of the window. The soft white light seemed to outline all of his edges, like something not quite of this Earth, like he could step up into it and disappear to a place where Yuuri couldn't reach him.

"Have you thought about what you'd like to do this afternoon while we're in Moscow?"

Victor shrugged and made a disinterested noise. "Not really. Whatever you feel like doing is fine."

They'd been to Moscow almost more times than Yuuri could count, now, but Victor always had something he insisted that they had to try, whether it was some weird new trendy restaurant, a tourist destination like St Basil's Cathedral or the Museum of Cosmonautics, or his hundredth or so attempt to get Yuuri to go into the Lenin mausoleum. They had a table reserved for a late dinner somewhere that didn't seem _too_ weird, but they'd have hours more to kill in the city before boarding the train at close to midnight.

This whole trip was Victor's idea, had been for years. A romantic journey around half the world in ten days, from the Baltic shore to the East China Sea, watching a continent pass day by day. Yuuri still wasn't sure how either of them was going to cope for more than a week without a proper shower. But after February, after everything that had happened in that awful week around Four Continents, the prospect of the journey was one of the few things that seemed to make Victor smile- a real smile, not that awful fake one he never seemed to be entirely rid of. So they were moving back to Hasetsu overland, most of their possessions already packed up and taken away to be shipped after them. There were days and days ahead of them to be spent entirely in the same kind of temporary space that they'd moved in and out of for their entire lives.

Yuuri had always felt like it would be easy to get lost in the identikit corridors in the backstage area of a rink, for that space of crossing over to turn itself around somehow and send you not out onto the ice with bright lights and familiar music, but into some other kind of place entirely, like the unfortunate protagonist of a fairy tale. And he'd seen Victor wander away from him before in the most open and familiar of spaces, down some dark route in his own mind where no-one could follow. 

He wanted to think about coming home again to Yu-topia, eating a long-overdue bowl of his mother's katsudon, slipping into the onsen with Victor and letting all the aches of their bodies and their minds dissipate into the steam. But they were still in Saint Petersburg, and Victor was still standing in the exact spot where the dog bed had lain underneath the window, and a great distance stretched between there and here. Yuuri slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans and walked over to stand beside his husband. Through the glass and the cool light, Saint Petersburg lay spread out beneath them, a sight they had looked at together every morning for more than four years.

"It's going to be a long goodbye," Victor said quietly.

"Ten thousand kilometres long."

Yuuri felt a gentle touch on his forearm, and then Victor's hand was slipping into his pocket alongside his own and intertwining their fingers. He was still looking out the window, something inscrutable on his face. Yuuri looked at him for a long moment, trying to think of exactly the right thing to say, when he heard the apartment buzzer ring.

"That must be the taxi," Victor said, and his hand slid out of Yuuri's as he headed towards the door.

Yuuri followed him. "Okay," he said. "I'm ready."

* * *

The Sapsan train between Saint Petersburg and Moscow was familiar enough. They had travelled down for the Rostelecom Cup this way every year since Yuuri's move to Russia- once for Victor to compete, once for Yuuri, and twice to support friends- and while they were, in Victor's words, 'slumming it' by only travelling in the business class carriage, it was comfortable and spacious enough for the four hour journey, and they still had wifi.

Victor let Yuuri take the window seat, and pushed up the armrest between them to lean across and drape himself over Yuuri's shoulder. Whether it was for his own comfort or Yuuri's was unclear, but Yuuri slid an arm around his waist and kissed his soft hair. The station platform was peeling away behind them, the clouds starting to thin out in the sky beyond, between the criss-crossing power lines overhead.

" _Do svidaniya, Sankt-Peterburg_ ," Victor murmured, and his voice sounded heavy, not quite sad but not quite anything else either.

"We'll be back," Yuuri answered him in Russian. "Really soon."

Victor made a non-commital noise. "It's still goodbye, though. I'd lived here my whole life, until I met you. I don't… I'm glad we're moving back home, but I'm going to miss it."

Yuuri pressed his palm to Victor's side, moving it softly up and down. "Me too." The ugly backs of buildings ran on and on past the train tracks, but after four years he knew the city beyond them, knew all the monuments and museums, the parks and wide, green spaces, the best places to get tea or buy pastries, and the handful of Asian supermarkets that had kept him from perishing from lack of proper food. Saint Petersburg wasn't home like Hasetsu was home, but it had meant a lot to him. Not least because of how much it meant to Victor.

Something small and tight and prickly curled up in Yuuri's chest at that thought. They had only lost Makkachin a few weeks ago, and if he knew anything at all about Victor it was that he wasn't dealing with it. Wouldn't the loss of his home city only compound the grief, push him further over the edge he was teetering on? Victor had wanted to do this, had refused to talk about delaying the move or putting it off entirely, but Victor was great at deciding to do things that were extremely bad for his own wellbeing. It was Yuuri's job to take care of him.

He looked down and sideways to where Victor's head was resting against his shoulder, eyes fixed on the view out of the window. The train was starting to pick up speed, shuddering underneath them. He _would_ take care of Victor, no matter what, no matter if this time around the depression lingered through the summer and into the start of what was supposed to be Yuuri's last competitive season. He could leave the Grand Prix to Yurio. He already had one Olympic gold medal, he didn't _have_ to try to get another one. They were matched for World Championship victories now; however much he itched to get one more, to actually beat Victor's absurd winning streak, he could live without it.

He couldn't live without Victor.

Against his shoulder Victor made a surprised little noise, and glanced up to meet Yuuri's eyes before pointing towards the window. They were passing alongside a fairly nondescript park, patches of green showing through the melting snow, but beyond it the Neva curved in towards them, wide and deep and dark. A flock of swans were gliding in to land on the surface of the water, and a beam of sunlight broke through the clouds and glittered over their trail.

The vague notion of Russia that had existed in Yuuri's mind before, an amalgamation of stereotypes and bad American movies mollified only by his earnest belief that wherever Victor came from couldn't be _that_ bad, had nothing on this. Saint Petersburg was beautiful in ways only magnified by the fact that this was where they'd built their marriage, where Yuuri's career had soared to heights he had barely dared to dream of. But aside from regular visits to Moscow and a few memorable vacations, he didn't actually know the rest of the country at all. Over the next few days, until their train turned southwards on Saturday evening and they crossed the Mongolian border, he'd see more of it than he had in four years. And then they would leave it behind.

Yuuri started slightly as he felt Victor's hand slide over his stomach and come to rest against his hip, and looked back towards him.

"You don't need to worry so much about me," Victor said softly, looking up at Yuuri through his eyelashes.

"It's the off-season. What else is there to do except worry about you and watch weird stuff on Netflix?" It wasn't that funny, but Victor cracked a little smile anyway before turning his face into Yuuri's shoulder.

"You're so good to me," he mumbled. Yuuri stroked his side again, breathed in the smell of his hair. Victor deserved everything he had to give. He could only hope it would continue to be enough.

* * *

They ended up taking the metro out to the Museum of Cosmonautics again, their suitcases deposited with left luggage at Yaroslavsky Station but still both carrying rucksacks and looking like obvious tourists. It was only as they were paying their entrance fee that Yuuri remembered he would have to be careful to steer them both clear of the exhibits about animals in the Soviet space programme. The evening after the last time they visited, it had only taken two glasses of wine over dinner for Victor to start crying about whether Laika had been lonely when she died. To be fair, Yuuri had joined in.

Instead, they wandered out into the main exhibition hall with its ceiling painted like a nebula, mystical and swirling colours a contrast to the clean red, white and chrome of the various exhibits. Yuuri's reading comprehension in Russian still lagged behind his speaking ability, but he didn't have to read all the signs to appreciate the sense of otherworldly grandeur about the place, the oddness of a futuristic aesthetic that was now distinctly of the past.

"I wonder what it would be like to skate in low gravity," Victor said, examining a display of moon rocks. "I mean apart from the fact that everybody would be doing sextuple jumps and other silly things."

Yuuri came up alongside him. "I think your momentum would be different. Harder to build up speed. I don't really know how the physics works though."

"And you'd have to wear a spacesuit. Not a lot that a costume designer could do for you in one of those."

"On the plus side, everyone weighs less on the moon. I could eat katsudon every day."

"Mmm. They haven't built a rink up there yet, have they?"

"For some reason it doesn't seem to have been a priority."

"No wonder the Soviet Union collapsed."

"Personally I blame the Americans. They got there first."

Victor offered him another little smile at that. It was something, at least. Yuuri took his hand and they walked past a number of creepy mannequins in distinctly unflattering spacesuits, the model of Salyut 6 gleaming overhead. There was a noisy group of school children in the gallery below, an elderly couple with grandchildren in a pushchair, two teenage boys who looked like they ought to have been in school uniform too holding hands and giggling as they ran in the opposite direction. Conversations washed over him from all sides.

In a week the only Russian Yuuri would hear spoken would be between himself and Victor. It felt like a strange shift in the balance of their relationship, their public language becoming private while the Japanese they'd spoken alone at home for years became everyday again. He wouldn't be able to get away with letting Victor's bizarre Russian-Kyushu pronunciation choices slide anymore, no matter how endearing they were. Every morning run would be filled with ' _ohayō, Katsuki-kun_ 's, and choruses of ' _gambatte ne_ 's would see him off to every competition. And it would be Victor's language that they would speak in private, that they would keep all their secrets in.

Victor had stopped in front of a poster, a man and a woman in shades of red in front of a field of stars, holding aloft a banner that declared, "WE WILL OPEN DISTANT WORLDS". He had that expression on his face again that Yuuri couldn't quite make sense of, that seemed to hang suspended somewhere between yearning and sadness and a deep and terrifying emptiness. After a moment he seemed to notice Yuuri looking at him and it vanished, replaced by an entirely false cheerfulness that was infinitely worse.

"Did you want to go to the gift shop when we leave? We could get some things for your family, and the Nishigoris."

The triplets were eleven now and would probably be much less impressed by themed erasers and teddy bears in space helmets than they had been last time, and Mari would _definitely_ progress to actual murder if they tried to get her to eat 'cosmonaut food' again, but maybe there would be something. And maybe he'd figure out the right way to tell Victor that he didn't have to pretend.

"Yeah. I'm sure we'll find something they'd like."

Victor nodded. Over their heads a defunct space station in miniature gleamed white against an imaginary sky.

* * *

Even the strong coffees they'd had after dinner couldn't stop Yuuri's eyelids from drooping as they hauled their suitcases along the dark platform at Yaroslavsky Station. The Trans-Mongolian Express stretched out into the distance and it seemed like a significant fraction of their journey would just be walking down the length of the train to where they needed to board. It was nearly half eleven at night, and aside from their fellow passengers and a few other overnight trains the station was eerily empty.

At what seemed like the furthest possible end of the platform, a woman with vividly red hair was setting out a little set of steps up to the door of their carriage. She glanced disinterestedly at their tickets and waved them up onto the train, and then they were squeezing along the narrow corridor with their luggage and looking for the right compartment.

It was small, although not nearly as cramped as it would have been if they weren't paying for a private two-person berth. There was a tiny table underneath the window with a little white tablecloth draped over it, and on one side was a little seat almost like an armchair while on the other was the lower of the two beds, the upper still folded against the wall. Yuuri propped up his suitcase and shrugged off his rucksack with a happy sigh, stretching his arms and rolling his shoulders as he sat down on the bunk. Victor locked the door behind them and then did likewise, tipping his head back against the wall.

"God, I want to sleep," he said, rubbing his eyes with one hand.

Yuuri gestured to the bunk they were sitting on and then upwards. "Top or bottom?"

The setup for a bad joke couldn't have been more obvious, but Victor totally ignored it, glancing up and down for a moment before biting his lip. Eventually he said, "You know… I haven't slept on my own since my last Nationals. Even the times you were away after that, I always… Makkachin kept me company."

Yuuri reached over and took his hand, squeezing it. "We'll share, then."

"It's a bit narrow."

"Worlds was less than a month ago, this is about as skinny as I ever get. We'll make it work." He stroked Victor's knuckle just under his wedding ring. "We've managed to pull off more unlikely things before."

Victor looked down at their hands. "We have," he said.

Yuuri looked at him a little longer before letting go, but only to lean in and carefully unzip Victor's hoodie, pushing it back off his shoulders before leaning in to press a gentle, chaste kiss to his cheek. "Where did you pack your pyjamas?"

"Rucksack," Victor said sleepily, and Yuuri kissed him again before stepping away to get them out. He carefully pulled Victor's t-shirt up over his head, and replaced it with the baggy, worn-soft SKA Saint Petersburg one he liked to wear to bed. Yuuri knelt down to unbuckle his belt and felt a little frisson of electricity run through him, but they were both tired and this wasn't about sex, anyway. This was about making sure Victor felt absolutely, completely loved. It might not help much- it didn't always help Yuuri either- but it was the one thing he knew he could do without a moment of hesitation. He tugged down Victor's jeans and boxer briefs, pressed another gentle kiss to his inner thigh just above the knee, and helped him into his pyjama pants.

"Here," he said, handing Victor his toothbrush. "Let me get changed too and I'll join you."

They brushed their teeth in the little washroom shared with the compartment next door; Victor finished first and when Yuuri stepped back into their compartment he had already laid out the sheets, pillows and blanket on the lower bunk. He stood up and pulled Yuuri close, pushing his hair back from his face and gently removing his glasses before giving him a very minty kiss.

"I love you," he said, eyes searching Yuuri's face for something, some kind of comprehension or reassurance. Yuuri caught the hand still stroking his hair and kissed the inside of Victor's wrist.

"I love you too," he murmured.

The bunk was _very_ narrow, but with Victor lying along the wall and Yuuri close against his back, arm slung over his waist, they managed to fit. April in Moscow still felt more like winter than spring, especially at night, but Victor practically radiated heat, and lying so close the familiar shape of his body was even more comforting than usual. It would have been lonely on the other bunk without him. Yuuri pressed the flat of his palm over Victor's heart, and there was a long, loud creaking noise as the train started to move.

"Next stop, Beijing," Victor said.

"I think it's actually Nizhny, at 6AM tomorrow."

"Why did I marry someone so pedantic?"

Yuuri nuzzled the back of his head. "You know why."

Victor was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "Yeah," and his voice sounded like something shattering along old, old fault lines. Yuuri wished there was some way to get closer still, to fold Victor into himself and kiss all the sadness out of him. Neither of them said anything for several minutes and Yuuri was starting to drift off to sleep when Victor spoke again.

"I know you thought we should have stayed, but I couldn't… I never lived in that apartment without Makkachin and I kept seeing her everywhere, and it felt like I was going crazy. I needed to be somewhere else. I'm glad we're doing this."

"Okay. I'm glad too." Under his hand Yuuri could feel Victor's heart beating, fluttering in time to the sound of the wheels rolling on beneath them.

"I'm… I'm trying really hard, Yuuri."

Yuuri swallowed hard and squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden prickling of tears, turning his head carefully to kiss the back of Victor's neck. "I know, Vityen'ka. I know. Let's get some sleep."

The bright lights of Moscow flickered against the curtain as the train bore eastwards into the night. Yuuri felt Victor's chest rise and fall under his hand, counted his heartbeats until everything blurred into yellow-dappled darkness and the engine's distant hum.


	2. Nizhny Novgorod - Perm

There was a banging on the door and a painfully brisk voice calling in Russian, "Wake up! Rise and shine! First stop coming up!"

Yuuri groaned and lifted a hand to rub the sleep out of his eyes. His left arm was tingling on the edge of total numbness from where Victor was lying on it, and he could feel a whole family of new aches blooming along his side. The compartment was full of watery sunlight filtering under the blind. He reached behind him for one of their phones on the table, and flicked it on and held it close to his face to check the time. It wasn't even six in the morning yet.

"What's happened?" Victor mumbled, moving stiffly.

"Uh. We're getting into Nizhny Novgorod, I think. Did you want to get off for a bit when we stop?"

"Ugh," was all Victor said, and Yuuri decided to take that as a no.

"Okay. But can I have my arm back?"

Victor grunted and lifted his upper body enough for Yuuri to slip his arm free. He stood up from the bunk, putting his glasses on as he shook the feeling back into it, then rubbed at the crick in his neck with his other hand. They didn't really have enough space for the full routine of yoga stretches he normally did in the mornings, but running through a few would at least help work out the stiffness of sleep. He was moving into a slightly wobbly triangle pose, trying to maintain his balance against the movement of the train, when Victor rolled over and sat up.

"You can't want to actually be awake right now," he said, and yawned into his hand.

"Not really. But I was a little stiff." The train was slowing down now, and when Victor turned and lifted the edge of the blind to peek out Yuuri caught a glimpse of a river flowing below. The Volga, possibly? He had a guidebook to the route downloaded onto his phone, he'd have to check it. "We can always go back to sleep later."

"True." Victor looked back and gave him a critical look. "Straighten your hips up, you're looking sloppy."

Yuuri moved carefully into his next pose. "Have _you_ ever done yoga on a moving train?"

"Several times, actually." That sounded like a lie, but Yuuri wasn't going to push it. "You balance on skates but you can't balance on great big rails?"

"On skates I know what's about to happen- oh _crap_ ," he spluttered, as the train lurched and sent him stumbling forward. Victor reached out and somehow prevented him from falling dick-first into the table, pulling Yuuri into his lap instead just as the train shuddered to a stop. Yuuri took a second to catch his breath, then smiled at him. "My hero."

"Are you okay?" Victor's expression was much more concerned than such a minor stumble warranted. Yuuri nodded and stroked his cheek.

"I'm fine. Here." He leaned in and gave him a quick kiss on the mouth. "Now we're officially up. For the time being, anyway."

Victor didn't exactly look thrilled about that prospect, but he wrapped his arms around Yuuri's waist and pulled him closer. "Did you want to get breakfast? I can't remember when the dining car opens. Or we have snacks." The corner of his mouth twitched up. "I packed some of those Maruchan noodles with your face on."

"Oh no." As if doing the TV advert hadn't been bad enough, the company had sent a truly ridiculous amount of complementary packets both to Yu-topia and all the way to Saint Petersburg, and even if instant ramen _was_ something Yuuri could indulge in on his usual diet, there was something deeply unsettling about eating food with a picture of yourself on it.

"Maybe not for breakfast then?"

"Right now I only really want some tea. Do you want me to get you some?"

"I'll come too." Victor nudged Yuuri up off his lap and stood up too, reaching for the luggage rack to pull down his suitcase, taking out a pair of travel mugs, some teabags, and an expensive-looking box of chocolates. "That guidebook said you should give the _provodnitsa_ a gift, so I got these."

They went down the corridor to the samovar in their pyjamas, bare feet cold on the thinly-carpeted floor. The train was still stopped at the station, and out on the icy platform was a little gaggle of women with covered carts and plastic boxes full of food, with a handful of much braver passengers perusing the wares. Beside the big water boiler was the red-haired woman from the previous night, filling up a large thermos flask. She had a side cap on now to match her smart blue uniform, and as they approached she looked up and then peered hard at Victor. Yuuri could sense him deflate a little.

"Good morning," was all she said though, and Yuuri recognised the voice that had woken them both up. "I'm Darya, your carriage attendant. Do you need anything?"

"Just some tea," Yuuri said, but Victor leaned forward and pressed the box of chocolates into her hands.

"For you!" he declared, with a slightly forced smile. "To thank you in advance for your hard work."

Darya huffed in surprise, but smiled in return, her eyes crinkling. "Well. Thank you. You did seem like a nice young man in that advert."

At that, Victor seemed genuinely surprised. "I'm sorry?"

"That advert. For the fancy dog biscuits. My Boris just loves them, have to keep them locked away or he'll get very fat. What are you, an actor or something? I feel like I've seen you somewhere else too."

Yuuri tried to keep his face composed as he squeezed past both of them to fill their mugs with hot water. Behind him, Victor had begun to sound a little flustered.

"I'm a figure skater."

"Really? Hmm. I don't follow sports."

"I've done a lot of adverts. I'm quite famous. I won three Olympic medals."

"Well these chocolates look very nice, thank you." Before Victor could say anything else, Darya had disappeared into her own compartment. Yuuri pressed a mug of brewing tea into his hands.

"Don't worry, I'm sure someone on this train will know who you are."

"I'm a national treasure!" Victor said petulantly, following Yuuri back down the corridor.

* * *

They ended up breakfasting on protein bars, dried fruit and several more mugs of tea, staying in their pyjamas as the train pulled out of Nizhny and away through dull farmland and densely wooded taiga. Victor got his tablet out and sat curled against the wall, blanket over his knees and stupidly expensive noise-cancelling headphones rendering him all but dead to the world.

Yuuri put on some music on his phone, too, and sat with his notebook open on the table, staring out of the window at the unrelenting rush of trees. He was still completely out of ideas for a theme for next season. There was plenty of time before they even had to start thinking about music and the beginnings of choreography, but this was going to be his last season and he wanted it to be _perfect_.

It was already more than a little absurd that he was still skating competitively. He was turning 29 in November. Victor had finally retired for good at 30, but even after knowing him for five years and being married to him for three, Yuuri still wasn't convinced that Victor was entirely physically human. One of these days he'd admit that the FFKKR had had him outfitted with cyborg knees or something. But then Yuuri was still the reigning world champion, despite his advanced age, still the only skater on the international stage consistently landing the quad flip, still Japan's primary hope for holding onto Olympic gold in Beijing in a year's time, even if Minami-kun would certainly be going with him.

When he'd imagined that the 16/17 season would be his swansong, the theme of 'Love' had been obvious. Home again in Hasetsu it had surrounded him, from places he had forgotten to even consider, and had stolen its way right into his heart when Victor had stepped down out of his posters and become a real person. Perhaps he could revisit it; skate all those loves grown and matured, and one last love song to the ice that had carried him so far. But something about that didn't feel right. He didn't want to be looking to the past. Life after retirement was a wide, open wilderness, and he didn't want to approach it with his back turned.

The tree line broke and past the window peeled a series of very angular, regularly-spaced concrete buildings, windows and doors blown out and half covered in vegetation. Yuuri worried at his lower lip, his phone shuffling on to a moody Sigur Rós song. His retirement meant change for both of them. Victor already did a little choreography work on the side for other skaters, and while it was always secondary to Yuuri's training now, he was in-demand enough to make it profitable afterwards. He was in demand as a coach too, but those requests he always turned down, which Yuuri was selfishly glad about. Victor was _his_ coach. But in a year's time he wouldn't be. And what would they do then?

The volume of the song dipped as a LINE notification came in, and he flicked the app open to a message from Mari.

> **Мари**  
>  You awake yet? What time zone are you in now?
> 
> We're both up. The train stays on Moscow time until we cross the Mongolian border.
> 
>  **Мари**  
>  That's going to get crazy the further east you get.
> 
> **Мари**  
>  Dad says to tell Victor he's bought more sweet potato shochu than any of us can possibly drink.
> 
> If they get drunk together I'm not dealing with the aftermath.
> 
>  **Мари**  
>  As if you weren't just as bad last time.
> 
> I thought we agreed never to talk about that night again.
> 
>  **Мари**  
>  I agreed to nothing.
> 
> You're my least favourite sister.
> 
>  **Мари**  
>  You're so kind  <3
> 
> **Мари**  
>  Oh by the way, you should see this:

Her next message was a photograph of the family shrine. The picture of Yuuri as a child holding Vicchan still sat framed in the middle, but next to it now was a familiar photo of Victor and Makkachin from that long summer of their year in Hasetsu. He was wearing his green Yu-topia jinbei and sitting with Makkachin's front paws on his shoulders, both hands engaged in scratching her behind the ears as he beamed at her. Yuuri's heart clenched.

> **Мари**  
>  We all miss her too.

Yuuri bit his lip again for half a second, then turned off his music and stood up, nudging Victor's feet aside to sit down again at the end of the bunk. Victor looked up and slid his headphones off.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah. Mari just sent me this, I thought you'd like to see it." He handed over his phone. Victor's eyes widened slightly as he looked at it, and his lip trembled.

"That's- that's really nice," he said, and under the shadow of his fringe a single tear tracked its way down his cheek.

It was kind of unfair that when Yuuri so much as _thought_ about crying, his face instantly went all red and blotchy and he turned into a snotty mess, whereas Victor crying managed to look like some kind of Renaissance painting. He was still holding onto Yuuri's phone and staring at it as more tears fell, and Yuuri tried desperately to think of the right thing to do. It felt almost as if he was intruding on something- Makkachin had been a part of Victor's life for far longer than he had, after all. But he couldn't just sit there and watch Victor cry, let him be all alone with whatever was twisted up in his head. He reached for his other hand and squeezed it hard, and Victor looked up from the phone.

"She's in good company," he said, his mouth twitching into a wobbly, short-lived smile, and then he shoved the phone and his tablet both onto the table and let himself fall forwards into Yuuri's arms. The sudden weight and the shifting of the train almost made Yuuri slip off the bunk, but he braced a foot against the floor to keep them both steady, rubbing Victor's back, feeling his damp face press against his neck. This, he could do. At least here in these close quarters, with the season well and truly over, Victor couldn't hide it from him anymore.

"Sorry," Victor mumbled, lips against his skin, and Yuuri only hugged him tighter. He was certainly not going to let his own ineptitude and failures as a husband make Victor feel any worse.

"Don't be," he said. "I've got you."

* * *

It was late in the afternoon when they disembarked at Balyezino. Past the platform full of food vendors were rows and rows of freight cars, some of them still lightly dusted with snow. The sky was dappled with fine, high cloud, the sun gleaming through it on its way down towards the horizon. Yuuri breathed in deeply, swinging his arms overhead and stretching up high, willing the tension and the travel-soreness out of his muscles. He was feeling the lack of his usual morning run more than he thought he would, unused energy crackling in his limbs.

He turned back towards the train, towards where Victor was examining a cart which appeared to sell a combination of pastries, decorative woven baskets, and religious icons. Its proprietor was extolling the virtues of one or perhaps all of her types of goods, and Victor was nodding with that look on his face that seemed outwardly polite and indicated an intense level of disinterest. Yuuri walked back over to him, still stretching each of his arms in turn.

"Hey," he said, touching Victor's elbow. "Walk with me?"

Victor took his hand, their gloved fingers intertwining. Unlike at Nizhny at six in the morning, most of the passengers had alighted here and the platform was busy, people shopping and smoking and enjoying the sensation of not being in motion for a few minutes. They wove their way through, down towards where the platform dropped away and uniformed engineers were changing over the locomotive that would pull them all onwards.

"I'm sorry for crying all over you this morning," Victor said once they'd stopped, tipping his head back to look at the power cables criss-crossing over their heads. "You told Mari thank you for sending the picture, right?"

"I told you, you don't have to be sorry." Yuuri moved around him until they were facing each other, reaching to touch Victor's cheek and draw his gaze back down. "I know you're trying to hold things together, but you don't have to pretend with me. I want to take care of you."

Victor's mouth twisted and he looked away. "Last time I got like this you went and got yourself injured and almost missed the Grand Prix. I won't let that happen again."

"How many times have I told you that wasn't your fault?"

"It was my responsibility as your coach to make sure you were safe trying to learn the quad loop. I'd just retired, it was my _only_ responsibility! And I couldn't even do it!"

"You'd just retired and I understood that it made you feel shitty."

"Yes, I was pathetic and miserable about not getting to win medals anymore when I had a wonderful student and husband to coach and had made more money off my competitive career than any other Russian skater in history. It was truly the most awful thing that has ever happened to anyone."

"Don't talk about yourself like that," Yuuri said reflexively, and realised as the words left his mouth that they sounded sharper than he'd intended. At least it got Victor to look at him again. He sighed. "Look, I know I still don't know what I'm doing and I feel like I probably can't help you at all, but please don't… please just let yourself feel stuff. It's not like you're going to be doing a lot of coaching me until we get to Hasetsu anyway. This is-" and he turned slightly and gestured towards the train stretching away from them "-this is somewhere in between. You have space here. We both do." He felt like none of that even made any sense, but Victor looked contemplative. "Let me look after you."

Victor opened his mouth but before he could say anything there was a loud, heavy _thunk_ as the new engine was connected to the train. They would be setting off again any minute, and Yuuri had read more than enough internet horror stories about people getting accidentally left behind en route. Victor tugged on his hand.

"Come on, let's get back aboard."

Past the edges of the town they were out into wide, flat farmland again, the sky huge overhead. Victor put his headphones on again but gazed out of the window this time, the cloud-filtered light reflecting in his beautiful eyes. Yuuri felt as if he could watch the landscape pass in all the things that moved across Victor's face, the shapes and colours and the rise and fall of hill and forest, the strange and beautiful loneliness of travel.

It almost hurt, sometimes, how much Yuuri loved him. It wasn't anything like the way he'd imagined love and marriage to be. He loved Victor's brilliance, his talent and skill, his nigh-otherworldly beauty, but he loved his faults and foibles just as much, loved that he was absent-minded and lazy and more obsessed with tailoring than was really healthy, even loved that he could be incredibly petty or blunt to the point of rudeness. He'd love him through anything, and it would be enough.

* * *

It was clear as they pulled into Perm that the closed universe of the train was starting to slip out of sync with the world around them. By Yuuri's watch, still on Moscow time, it was about half past eight, but in the city it was two whole hours ahead of them and fully dark. A little brown moth fluttered against their compartment window, framed by the dull golden dots of streetlights running away from the station.

"Did you want to get off for a bit here? I'm going to make another cup of tea." Victor shook his head and pushed his own mug across the table.

"Black tea for me this time, please. I think I remembered to pack some jam for it."

When they got home to Hasetsu Yuuri was going to be teased _mercilessly_ about having developed a taste for black tea with jam- very strong, with a generous spoonful of strawberry, just like Victor took it. He pulled Victor's rucksack down from the luggage rack overhead and fished out the teabags and the little jar of jam that had sunk down to the bottom. It had been a regular evening ritual, curling up together on the couch with Makkachin sprawled out over their laps, drinking sweet, fruity tea and watching something mindless on TV and not needing to talk or do anything but be close to each other.

It was quiet in the corridor as he walked down to the samovar, the lights from the platform slanting in through the windows. The door to Darya's little compartment was open and she was sitting on the bunk with her shoes off, reading a book, but looked up and gave a polite nod as Yuuri stopped to fill up their mugs. The aged-looking water boiler huffed and whistled, almost making up the space left by the silence of the train. It already seemed strange whenever they stopped, not hearing the sound of the wheels underneath and the labour of the engine ahead, but at least the quiet of it suited the eerie darkness of Perm lying beyond the platform. Yuuri stopped for a moment on his way back, looked out past the lights to the indistinct shapes of buildings where thousands of strangers slept, unconcerned with their passing.

Back in the compartment Victor stirred the jam into their tea and slid an arm around Yuuri when they sat down on the bunk together. It wasn't nearly as comfy as the couch back at their Saint Petersburg apartment, but it was close enough.

"How's your book?" Yuuri asked, leaning against Victor's shoulder and looking up at him, tea cradled in his hands. Victor made a face.

"Dragging. It's supposed to be a spy novel, but the characters spend half their time emoting about communism. Not enough gadgets and invisible ink and…" he gestured vaguely at his tablet "…spy stuff, I don't know."

"Shame." Yuuri dropped a hand down to settle on Victor's knee, stroking with his thumb. "We could play some _Monster Hunter_ tomorrow? Finally get you into G-rank?"

"If you're going to relent and carry me."

"Well if you ever wore a decent armour set…"

"I don't want the monsters to see me looking ugly," Victor said haughtily, but then he laughed quietly and pressed his nose into Yuuri's hair. "That sounds fun though. And maybe we could eat in the dining car. Your face makes those noodles look a lot tastier than they actually are."

"If you don't mind being around people."

Victor exhaled a soft little huff of breath, not quite a sigh, and sipped his tea. "I think it'll be okay, if I'm with you."

That went for so many things in Yuuri's life too. He squeezed Victor's knee and sipped from his own mug.

"And you _are_ helping," Victor continued, unprompted, and Yuuri turned back to look up at him curiously. Victor was staring out of the window again, at where the moth still beat fruitlessly against the glass. "Earlier, you said you didn't think you could help. You are. Even if it doesn't look much like it." His voice sounded strange, younger and more vulnerable somehow, when he added quietly, "Please don't go anywhere."

Yuuri set his tea down and turned to look at Victor properly, just as a tear rolled delicately down his cheek. There was a shudder beneath them as the train began to move off again, and Yuuri pressed his hand against Victor's chest, half to brace himself and half in reassurance.

"Never," he said, and leaned to kiss the underside of Victor's jaw, tasting wet and salt. "You're mine. I'm never leaving you." Victor made a choked little noise and Yuuri pressed in closer, kissing him again. "Sorry to inform you, but you're stuck with me. Permanently. No backsies."

"Sounds like you got a pretty poor deal," Victor mumbled.

"I got exactly what I wanted," Yuuri replied, splaying his fingers and tightening them again in the fabric of Victor's hoodie. " _Exactly_."

"And I'm crying all over you. Again."

"If you apologise again I'm throwing the jam out of the window."

" _Cruel_ ," Victor said, his voice a little less choked-up and tight, and turned his face into Yuuri's hair again. For a long time they sat in silence, the lights of the city flickering past the window like a coded message that skipped and stuttered until they were enveloped again by the dark of the countryside. The night clung close about the train, pressing against the windows, seeking out the cracks. There was no sign of the moon.

"Let me know when you're ready to get some sleep," Yuuri said, barely above a whisper.

"Are you tired?" Victor's voice was soft too, achingly reminiscent of a hundred other long evenings together, of a thousand tender words said in the dark.

"No, not really."

"Okay. Me neither."

"Just think. A week from tomorrow we'll be home."

"Home," Victor echoed, and his arm squeezed a little tighter around Yuuri's waist. 

Tonight they'd cross the border between Europe and Asia, marked somewhere in the darkness between here and Yekaterinburg, and wake on another continent. For now, their tea was getting cold on the table.


	3. Yekaterinburg - Novosibirsk

Yuuri dreamed that he was running, feet slapping on the asphalt, wind against his face and the air full of the sound of seagulls calling. It was the Palace Embankment in Saint Petersburg, the river beside him busy with boats, clouds overhead promising snow. It was the last bridge before the sea in Hasetsu, warm sunlight gleaming off the castle's white walls on the hill ahead. He was running on hard, packed ground, trees everywhere around him, great snow-capped mountains rising in the distance, running across a continent.

_I have to get there_

_Victor is waiting for me_

Yuuri dreamed that he was riding a train on tracks of cloud, high in the stratosphere, faster than any plane he had ever flown on, but he was late for the competition, late and the ice was waiting for him, late and the timer was ticking, the music starting, Victor leaning against the boards in his brown coat, eyes alight. Everyone was waiting.

_I have to get there_

Yuuri dreamed that he was adrift on a wide, flat ocean, and his life raft was the bed he'd shared with Victor since he moved to Saint Petersburg. Over their heads hung a hundred jars of fireflies that sang like summer cicadas, and Victor was curled on his side asleep, hair stirring in a breeze that Yuuri couldn't feel. On the far horizon the water blurred into the sky. Victor's eyes always made him think of the sea, of sunlight falling into clear water and fading away into blue.

_He's waiting for me_

If there was a wake-up call for Yekaterinburg, the first light of dawn gleaming over the track ahead, he dreamed the whole way through it, dreamed on eastwards as they bore into the day.

* * *

In the end he was woken by a high-pitched shriek, and whacked his hand hard on the table twice scrabbling for his glasses.

"Vitya?" The compartment was empty, but he could hear water running in their washroom. Yuuri kicked off the blanket and got up from the bunk, taking a moment to get his balance before opening the washroom door.

On the other side, Victor was entirely naked and bending forward over the sink, one hand holding the attached shower head as he very gingerly ran it over his head. He glanced up at the sound of the door opening, wet hair falling forward over his face.

"Is everything okay?" Yuuri asked, and Victor made a face.

"The water is so _cold_ ," he said with a little whine. "I needed to wash my hair, but at what cost?"

Yuuri echoed his grimace. His own hair needed a wash too. This was the hard reality behind the romanticism of long-distance train travel. When this line had been built, the average Russian probably only washed themselves twice a year or something.

"Here, let me," he said, stripping his t-shirt off before stepping into the tiny washroom and reaching for the shampoo Victor had set on the side. He poured a little into his hands and stepped around the puddles on the floor to start lathering up Victor's hair. "Is that better?"

"Still cold," Victor said, but he hummed under his breath as Yuuri carefully shampooed his hair. He made a marginally more dignified squeaking noise when Yuuri rinsed it out again. "Let me do yours while I've got my conditioner in."

"This room is really not big enough for two adult men," Yuuri grumbled, but kicked off his pyjama pants and threw them back into the compartment before bending over the sink. He managed not to make a noise when Victor subjected him to the water, even though it felt like it had been pumped directly from the Arctic Circle, but sighed happily as he massaged shampoo into Yuuri's scalp. Victor's fingers could soothe away all kinds of aches and pains, and did a wonderful job on Yuuri's slight morning headache. Once the conditioner was in he straightened up and pushed his wet hair out of his eyes.

"Now we're both cold," he said. Victor smiled, real and beautiful, and ducked in for a kiss, water dripping from his hair onto Yuuri's face.

"Warm me up then." Another kiss, longer and slower, and Yuuri leaned into him.

"You know the next compartment is through that door, right?"

"Yes, that's why I locked it." Victor's hand, which was also extremely cold, settled at the small of his back, and Yuuri couldn't help a slight flinch.

"Oh, well as long as it's locked…" They kissed like they hadn't for weeks, easy and playful with a familiar heat smouldering beneath the surface. Sex recently had been a matter of either all-too-brief reassurance, or else of concentrating entirely on Victor's needs and comfort. It wasn't that he disliked focusing on Victor- he _loved_ finding every possible way to pleasure him, make him feel incontrovertibly adored- but their life together had always been one of giving and taking, the constant shifting interplay between them. He missed the Victor who flirted and teased, who kissed him like he had a mouth full of secrets to share. Yuuri stepped closer, running his own cold hand over Victor's stomach and feeling the muscles jump. Then there was a sharp knock at the other door.

"Excuse me," a voice called in Russian, "but are you nearly finished?"

Victor snickered against Yuuri's mouth and breathed, " _nyet_ ". Yuuri pressed their foreheads together for a moment before leaning over Victor's shoulder to reply, "About five more minutes!"

"You're the worst husband," Victor whispered. "Now we actually have to wash."

"Well what was your plan, spend all day naked with conditioner in our hair?"

"That doesn't sound so bad."

Yuuri looked up at Victor and cocked his head as if he was actually considering the idea, all the while reaching around him for the shower head that was still running icy cold into the sink. When he had his hand around it, he jerked it up to aim at Victor's head, and this time he shrieked even louder than before.

"You're awful!" Victor spluttered through a mouthful of water and conditioner. "Awful! Give me that!"

"Not until you're clean!"

Victor threw the soap at him.

* * *

Victor's good mood lasted them all the way through breakfast in the restaurant car, and they stayed afterwards with their Switches to work on Victor's less than stellar monster hunting career.

"Now this isn't about me carrying you," Yuuri said, looking down at his screen where their impressively armoured characters were wandering around the Gathering Hall. "Stick to its tail and don't waste half the time vaulting around the map trying to get a mount."

"What's the point of this weapon if I don't get to jump around?" Victor said with a pout. His palico, which he had charmingly named Yakov, was washing its whiskers.

"Well if you _want_ Yuuko to call you a 'puny Russian noob' again…" It was probably for the best that Yuuko didn't play a lot of PVP games. It was terrifying enough to watch her decimate elder dragons with a long sword.

"Who would ever have thought that such a sweet, kind woman would become such a monster with a console in her hands," Victor said, finally posting his quest and heading for the gate.

"You didn't know her as a kid."

The quest began reasonably well. It was an excellent form of stress relief to smash a gigantic monster in the face with a weapon that looked like a tricked-out electric guitar, and Victor was on better form than usual, weapon flashing gold as he attacked the tail and used his kinsect to harass. Yuuri glanced up at him from time to time and couldn't help a smile at the intense look of concentration on his face, tongue sticking out as he hammered buttons and moved the console to and fro as if that would actually help.

Yuuri was just setting up for a song combo when Victor shouted gleefully, "Got it! I got the tail off!"

"Well done!" Yuuri said, looking up to smile at him, and realised a split second later that he'd made a terrible mistake. As if in slow motion, he looked down, fruitlessly jamming on B to evade, as his character was squashed under a large and monstrous paw.

"Darling," Victor said, his voice thick with mock sorrow, "you carted."

"Yes, I noticed."

"I thought you were some kind of hotshot virtuoso. With that big horn and everything. Are you compensating for something?"

Yuuri gritted his teeth, rifling through the supply chest for healing items before heading back into the arena. His palico hopped impatiently from paw to paw. "Try not to die twice before I get back."

"Oh I'm doing- _crap_ \- I'm doing just fine without you." Victor's face had a little sheen of sweat, somewhat belying his claims. "Maybe I'll go and find another puny Russian noob to play with."

Yuuri jumped back down into the arena just as Victor downed the monster with a mount, and ran over to start battering at it, smacking an attack boost song into its face and letting out a "hah!" of satisfaction when he broke a fang.

For all he mocked Victor's sometimes unorthodox playstyle, they made a pretty good team. They'd had a good time playing with Yurio on the western release of the game too, even if he did drag everything down a little by refusing to play as anything but a cat. And to think that Victor had barely known what a 3DS was when he'd moved to Japan.

He glanced up, about to make a comment on their lack of a feline third player, but the words died on his lips when he saw the broad grin on Victor's face. Neither of them had spoken to Yurio at any length since the day before Makkachin died, when they'd had an enormous row just as Yuuri was in final preparations for Four Continents. Victor had been particularly cutting in a way that few other people could be.

Really, it was beyond presumptuous for Yurio to have just assumed that Victor- or Yuuri, or possibly both of them, he hadn't exactly been clear- would want to coach him, and that they'd both stay in Russia to do it. It wasn't as if he couldn't have his pick of top coaches when Yakov retired. And while he'd mostly grown out of expressing every single emotion by yelling, Yurio wasn't exactly complimentary about Victor's coaching style.

And then there was what Victor had said that had made Yurio storm out of the room, said with his eyes narrowed and a nasty curl to his lip, _"Do you really think skating is all everyone wants out of life, Yura?"_ It had stuck in his head like the words were caught on something, fluttering at the edge of his thoughts when he'd woken up to Victor sobbing the next morning, when he'd crashed to seventh place at Four Continents, even when he'd clawed his way back to the top of the podium at Worlds. Victor wanted more in his life than just skating. But what if skating was all that Yuuri had to give him?

"Look, it's limping!"

Yuuri shook his head and focused back on the fight. They'd got to this point twice before and still managed to fail dramatically, but they were only one death down this time. He wanted this for Victor. It was a tiny, trivial victory, but it meant something. And hopefully Yuuko wouldn't make fun of him quite so hard.

"Don't get cocky," Yuuri said, staying on the attack. The chat was full of cat puns from their palicos, which were completely unhelpful, but pretty cute all the same. Victor was still actually following his advice, evading cleverly and landing most of his attacks, and his face was furrowed with the kind of deep concentration that usually only appeared when he was working on choreography or trying to make sense of the plot of one of his Russian soap operas.

"Come _on_ ," he said, "how much health does this thing have?"

"A lot."

"So helpful."

"It's got to be nearly dead now."

"It had better- oh _fuck yes!_ " The monster staggered and keeled over, and as the quest clear theme started to play Victor dropped his Switch onto the table and threw his hands up in delight, before leaning over to grab Yuuri by the ears and kiss him. " _Now_ who's a noob?"

"Not you, clearly." Yuuri grinned back at him, then turned to look out of the window for the first time in nearly an hour. They were officially crossing Siberia now, past Tyumen and into the wide, flat grasslands of the steppe. The landscape stretched away on all sides, full of possibility.

* * *

The chef in the dining car seemed to have a fairly loose concept of what constituted a 'salad'; Yuuri's plate consisted mostly of salmon, with a few errant leaves of lettuce and cucumber slices, and one lonely tomato. It was mildly impressive that Victor's borscht was actually liquid, and more or less the right colour. He was used to eating protein in vast quantities, it was just that normally it didn't constitute about 80% of any given plate. But the carriage was full of bright spring sunshine, the sky huge and blue outside, and Victor was still smiling and talking happily about ice hockey in a way that Yuuri, after five years of exposure, was just about able to follow.

He was getting his phone out to google which, if any, Japanese TV stations would be showing the upcoming world championships when Victor's flow of conversation was suddenly interrupted by a burst of loud, high-pitched and totally incomprehensible speech.

There was a child standing by their table, head just peeking over the top of it. She looked about… well, she wasn't a toddler and she wasn't a teenager, and Yuuri really had no idea how people told apart the ages in between. She was gesturing at the two of them and talking with great enthusiasm in a mysterious European language. Maybe German? Swedish? Whatever it was, it was clear that she knew who they were. Victor's expression was stuck somewhere between bewilderment and his glassy public smile.

"Do you speak English at all?" he asked the girl gently when she finally stopped talking to take a breath. " _Ou français?_ " 

She scowled at him and then rolled her eyes, pointing with deliberate slowness first at Yuuri, then back at Victor, before reaching up to slam the flat of her hand on the tabletop. " _Mila Babicheva!_ " she declared emphatically, and for all they were the first words she'd said that Yuuri could understand, he still had no idea what on earth was happening.

"Yes, we know Mila," he said, in English, although it didn't seem as if that would make any difference.

"Are your parents here?" Victor asked, sitting up slightly to peer down the carriage. The girl let out an aggrieved sigh that was more than a little hilarious coming from someone of her diminutive size.

"Sofie!" In the blink of an eye their tableau of linguistic mystery was joined by a fourth figure, a woman maybe Victor's age with close-cropped red hair and a harassed slump to her shoulders. She grabbed the little girl by the hand and said something remonstrative-sounding in the same strange language, and then looked up. "I am very sorry," she began in tentative, accented Russian, and then her eyes flared and narrowed as she looked at them both properly. Victor's smile got a little wider and a little faker.

"Is English okay?" the woman asked, and when Yuuri nodded she let out a little huff of relief. "I am sorry. My daughter's English is not good yet, but she likes to try and make friends anyway. You are, ah, you are skaters, right?"

Yuuri was opening his mouth to reply with a simple 'yes' when Victor gestured grandly at him and said, "This is Yuuri Katsuki, the mens' singles World Champion. I'm his husband."

"Oh," the woman said, and blushed slightly. "Sorry. We don't really follow the mens' events." Sofie tugged on her hand and said something in possibly-German; Yuuri caught Mila's name again and watched another stormy scowl form on Sofie's face as her mother responded. "I am so sorry, really," she said as she turned back to them, "this is very rude, but do you know Mila Babicheva? The ladies' singles champion? Sofie is a big fan."

"Yes, she is- was our rinkmate," Yuuri said. She was also a regular dogsitter, the nexus of all the best gossip in European skating, and had made quite the impression in a suit as Victor's best (wo)man. She'd wanted to throw them a going-away party, and Yuuri had been worried up until the morning they left that he hadn't actually succeeded in talking her out of it.

"Would you like a signed photo from her?" Victor's expression had softened and become more real, like he'd unlocked the puzzle of this whole encounter. "If there's an address you're comfortable giving us. Mila always loves to hear from her fans."

"Oh, yes, wow, um," the woman said, and started rooting around in the pockets of her hoodie before producing a small, white business card. "And my wife says I am old-fashioned for having these! Hah! This is my office." She took out a small pen too and turned the card over to spell out 'S-o-f-i-e' on the back. "You are really very kind. Thank you."

"It's no problem," Victor said, his smile looking strained again when he turned it on Sofie, who frowned suspiciously at him but waved goodbye to Yuuri as her mother led her back down the gangway. Yuuri waved back a little awkwardly, then picked up the business card, turning it over to read off an address in Copenhagen. So it wasn't German _or_ Swedish. Across the table, Victor fell back against the seat with a heavy sigh, closing his eyes.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Children are just so…" Victor made a vague gesture.

"Yeah, they are." It wasn't that Yuuri disliked children, it was just that they were very confusing, even when they spoke a language he understood. He could deal with the triplets, especially now they were getting older, but that was about it.

"Makkachin was much better with kids than either of us," Victor continued, and his voice seemed to slide downward as he said it. "She was better with people generally. I always struggled with interviews before I got her, when I was little- I'd either talk far too much or I'd feel like I couldn't think of what to say. But after, if things weren't going well, I could always talk about her, and people seemed to like that. Sometimes I'd bring her along so she could distract the journalist directly. She made everything easier."

It was funny, because so much of that was what Victor did for Yuuri. He had a way of charming people, putting them at ease, that for a long time Yuuri had assumed was natural and effortless. It was like a bridge between the complete nonsense in Yuuri's brain and the rest of the world, being able to say 'well Victor thinks…' and let the conversation follow a route he understood. 

Victor was looking out of the window now and the easy happiness from before was gone from his face, and Yuuri shoved down the urge to try and make him smile again. This was important too. They'd barely talked about her, and maybe they should have been.

"She was…" Victor started, then swallowed. "She was a really good dog, Yuuri."

"She was the _best_ dog." Yuuri reached across the table to take his hand, and felt his own eyes start to prickle.

"Remember when we came back from Beijing and she'd already learned to respond to ' _ote_ ' and ' _osuwari_ '?" Yuuri nodded and Victor smiled wanly. "She was so clever. Did I ever tell you about the time…"

* * *

The bridge over the Ob leading into Novosibirsk was almost a kilometre long and they crossed it slowly, the lights of the train glittering gold and white in the dark water below. Yuuri leaned against the wall of their compartment, looking past the open blinds and back along the length of the train, Victor nestled against his chest with his legs spread out along the bunk.

"Do you want to get some fresh air when we stop?" Victor asked. Yuuri could still smell the sweet, herbal conditioner on his hair, and it made his heart flutter.

"Might be nice. According to the guidebook the station is one of the city's only real attractions, so it's some easy sightseeing."

"Simple entertainment out here in Siberia," Victor said, then laughed at himself. "Wow, I forgot to pack my 'asshole from western Russia' t-shirt."

"Well if you behave yourself maybe I won't tell anyone."

"I'll behave," Victor said, in a tone that made it clear that he wouldn't. Yuuri squeezed his arm.

Past the station floodlights and the dull yellow buzz of the city's lights, there were things in the sky that could almost be stars. By local time it was past one in the morning, and the station's shop was closed, but they bought pear sodas from a vending machine and walked alongside the robin-egg blue building, frost crunching under their feet. Victor took his phone out and Yuuri watched out of the corner of his eye as he scrolled idly through Instagram.

"Look." Victor turned the phone so Yuuri could see it properly. "Chris is going to be coaching next season. Some French kid." On the screen was a picture of Chris at an unfamiliar rink with his arm around a slight boy with dark, shaggy hair and a bright smile, his other hand giving a thumbs-up. Victor scrolled down to read the caption. "Ahmed Zidane. Looks like he's still in Juniors."

"I hope his parents know what a bad influence he's picked as a coach."

"Well Chris can't possibly be as bad an influence as me," Victor said, and Yuuri stepped in and slid an arm around his waist. Despite the incredibly close quarters they had been sharing constantly since Tuesday, his need for closeness only seemed to have increased. Victor had always been an exception to the space he cultivated around himself, someone with whom Yuuri could still comfortably be alone.

"Yes, you're a _horrible_ influence. Adding three quads to my jump roster, coaching me to gold in two Grand Prix Finals, five World Championships, and the Olympics, getting me to produce half my own programmes…"

"Seducing you," Victor added airily, and Yuuri snorted.

"That's not how I remember it."

"You have to admit, my coaching methods are a little… unconventional." He paused for a moment in contemplation. "I'm still wondering whether Yurio actually wanted me as a coach, or if he was just pissed off that we were planning to leave Saint Petersburg and thought that would make us stay."

So in the end Victor was the one who brought it up. Yuuri couldn't help a soft sigh of relief. "I hadn't thought about it like that."

"I think if what he really wanted was a coach, he'd have asked you outright." Victor sipped his soda. "Honestly, I don't have the faintest idea how I'd even go about coaching someone I wasn't in love with. I'd have thought that was obvious enough."

"What makes you think I'd be any better?" Yuuri said, tipping his head to look up into Victor's face. Of all the things he had allowed himself to briefly consider about life post-retirement, coaching had barely registered as a possibility. Victor was the one out of the two of them who was a coach, and he was _Yuuri's_ coach.

"You're talented, darling- incredibly talented- but everything you do has come out of hard work too. You understand how to get from one place to another. So often I hardly even had to try." He laughed quietly. "Coaching was the first thing I'd been genuinely _bad_ at for years. Well, apart from relationships, but it's easier to make excuses for that."

Yuuri searched for the right way to be reassuring without being dishonest about the fact that Victor _had_ been dreadful when he first turned up in Hasetsu and appointed himself coach. "Well, if it's any consolation, your initial attempts at coaching were still better than your flirting." That wasn't actually very reassuring at all. But Victor let his arm settle around Yuuri's shoulders nevertheless.

"My flirting _worked_ , therefore it was the best flirting," Victor said sagely. He scrolled further down his feed. "Oh, now that's making me homesick." The picture was from the Yu-topia account that Mari maintained, of the small fountain pool lit in soft orange and red in the early light of the morning, and captioned in Japanese and English, 'Enjoy a relaxing sunrise bath before a freshly-made traditional breakfast'. It had an impressive amount of likes and comments.

"Not long now," Yuuri said. The wool of Victor's coat felt scratchy against his cheek as he leaned closer in. "I think I might have to be forcibly removed from the onsen once we're there."

"Mmm. We can just live in there. Be permanent fixtures and entertain the guests."

"Now why didn't I consider that as a career to begin with?"

"Good thing you married someone as smart as me," Victor said, and the tilt of his tone was clearly anticipating a put-down, but Yuuri only squeezed him harder around the waist.

"Good thing I did."

The train would be departing soon, the figures of the staff already moving around it on the far platform. The night air still bore the sharp edge of winter, but like stars still gleaming through city lights, beyond it lay a softly-shining promise of spring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For any fellow MH nerds out there- Yuuri is using the Fatalis Hunting Horn and Victor the Magala Insect Glaive. They're fighting an Akantor.
> 
> For the uninitiated: Monster Hunter is an action RPG series made by Capcom that is crazy popular in Japan. The general premise is that you fight giant scary monsters, collect bits of the monsters you've fought to make better armour/weapons, and then fight gianter and scarier monsters. The games have single player campaigns but it's really all about co-op play, where you fight monsters alongside friends and/or internet strangers. The combat is Dark Souls-level hard, but the games are incredibly, endearingly goofy. And there are lots of cats.

**Author's Note:**

> Come and say hi to me on tumblr at [thetwoguineabook](http://thetwoguineabook.tumblr.com)!


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